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Originally Posted by Drunk Vegan
Why are you smiling, Warren? The quotes you just posted PROVED YOU ARE WRONG!
I find it truly astounding that you could post them with a straight face as though they were evidence that CERN could be dangerous...
When in fact, they prove that CERN is 100% harmless.
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Hey, I just thought all you
Bad Astronomer groupies out there would find interesting what Phil had to say--as I did. That doesn't mean I agree with him. I don't, but haven't really had time yet to dissect his answer to my question yet.
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To summarize:
CERN cannot create a Dangerous Planet Eating Black Hole because:
1. Chances are CERN won't be capable of making a black hole of any kind due to hardware limitations..
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HAHAHAHAHA!!!!! You can say
that again!!!! Good one!
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2. BUT may be able to create a particle-sized black hole IF string theory is correct.
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Well, Phil at one point in the program said he didn't have a clue if string theory is true or not. So shall we just call it an even chance? But we'll go with Giddings and Mangano's idea that only a few of the dimensions are dangerous. So we'll go with 5th and 6th-D, and throw in 7-D just to be conservative. So out of extra possible dimensions, 8, 9, 10, and 11-D are safe, whereas 5, 6, and 7-D are "potentially problematic". Thus, 3/7 * 0.5 = 21.4%
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3. The infinitesimally small black hole will probably evaporate through Hawking Radiation, in the unlikely event it is created.
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A pole of 15 physicists listed their personal subjective probabilities that Hawking radiation will fail. The average was 9%. Moreover, Hawking radiation itself can be a danger. Under some scenarios, an Eddington limited black hole could form within the Earth would still result in catastrophe, even though it wouldn't gobble the entire Earth, as Plaga has argued. (And G&M have yet to respond to Plaga's rejoinder, so his theory is still "live"). Perhaps 10-20 physicists have weighed in on this one. If we assume they all disagree with Plaga, though they have yet to directly address Plaga's concerns, so let's call the probability that Hawking radiation could be a danger at roughly 5%. So we combine the probabilities (91% x 5%) + 9% = 13.5%
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4. The size of the hole makes it comparable to a single star compared to an entire galaxy (a single particle compared to the hundreds of billions of particles that make up an object). A star cannot draw the rest of the galaxy in with its gravity because the distances between stars are simply too staggeringly high. By the same token, a single particle can not destroy a macro-object with hundreds of billions of particles.
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Well, Giddings and Mangano in fact calculated 5 and 6-D mBH's would be potentially problematic at comparatively short time scales. So let's leave out the 7-D, and call it 66.7%.
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5. It's highly probable that most or all black holes that could be created by a particle collider would be moving so quickly upon creation that they'll be flung off the Earth entirely.
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Sorry, you're not entirely correct here. Granted,
most metastable LHC produced mBH's would shoot off into space. However, under the circumstances outlined above, the LHC would be a "black hole factory", as Steve Giddings likes to say. Such mBH's would be produced at the rate of up to one per minute to one per second. Therefore, millions of mBH's would be produced. The hardest ones to trap would be the 5-D mBH's, but Giddings and Mangano estimated that perhaps ~100 or so would be trapped over the course of the LHC's projected lifetime. In other words,
if the LHC will produce metastable mBH's, then it's pretty much a certainty that at least a few will get trapped by the Earth's gravity well. So let's call it 99%
In short... the overall probability of potential problematicity is:
0.214 x 0.135 x 0.667 x 0.99 = 1.9%
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Originally Posted by Drunk Vegan
Large Hadron Colliders a DANGER??
Not at all.
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Only if you consider an expectation of death of ~ 100,000,000 people to be nonproblematic (6 x 109 people x 1.9%). . . . 
If you disagree with the probabilities that I assigned under your scenario that's supposed to guarantee the safety of the LHC, feel free to substitute your own subjective probabilities. I would appreciate at least a little justification for each probability you assign though. You would be helping us out, since CERN absolutely refuses to publish their own estimate for pcatastrophe.
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Originally Posted by Drunk Vegan
You're full of it, Warren.
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Full of what exactly?
